Quotes About Observation

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.

I feel, it is essential to see oneself on-screen so as to be a better judge of one's performance.

Every time I work, it's an educational process because I learn by watching other actors. My career is always going to be an ongoing study.

I've always liked to watch myself onscreen because that's how I learn.

Good comics gravitate to each other; you know who's your type of person by watching them onstage, hopefully.

I consider myself something of a self-taught anthropologist. I try not to talk about something unless it's something I love. But if it's something that really annoys me, I fixate on it, learn something about it and then, when I'm onstage, it comes out.

When you get onstage, you can see everyone in the audience's face, down to the detail. You can see who may or may not be yawning.

I'm always making micro-adjustments onstage, listening to the audience, and what a crowd is like can be infectious.

When I'm onstage, I'm on, but a different part of me is on: the part of me that absorbs life, sees everything occurring, and touches on everything around me.

My work is not so much a direct commentary as it is an open-ended observation of the absurdities around us.

Find what's hot, find what's just opened and then look for the worst review of the week. There is so much to learn from watching a restaurant getting absolutely panned and having a bad experience. Go and see it for yourself.

The rest of the band tend to notice things like the door getting opened for the lead singer. And the door shuts on the rest of the band. The lead singer doesn't notice that, but the rest of the band does.

As an assistant, when you wake up in the morning, you're opening your laptop and watching film. Then the game starts, and you're watching it until you finally fall asleep.

I've met Michael Keaton, John Favreau, Marisa Tomei - they're all really amazing people and really, really professional. I've learned so much from just watching them operate on set.

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.

I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.

I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.

My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth; I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.

He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us.

Did you hear what I was playing, Lane? I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.

Ah! I have talked quite enough for today, said Lord Henry, smiling. All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.